Ed Miliband's woes

The trouble with Ed

Labour is suffering from a lack of ideas, not just a struggling leader

IGNOMINIOUS policy climbdowns, a stalling economy, irksome coalition partners—the least of all of David Cameron's worries is Ed Miliband. The Labour Party's leader is struggling to persuade voters, and some of his colleagues, that he is an effective figurehead for the opposition, let alone a plausible prime minister. Reports of a plot against him by Ed Balls, the shadow chancellor, or supporters of David Miliband, the former foreign secretary defeated by his younger brother in the party's leadership contest last year, are mistaken. But grumbles about Ed Miliband's supposed left-wing instincts and lack of vigour abound in his shadow cabinet.

Mr Miliband is held in even lower esteem by the general public. A YouGov poll released on June 12th showed that a majority of voters think he is doing badly as Labour leader and are unsure what he stands for (see chart). By a huge margin, they say his brother would do a better job. It is not much consolation that they think all the other mooted alternatives—including Mr Balls, Harriet Harman, the party's deputy leader, and Yvette Cooper, the shadow home secretary—would be worse.

On June 10th details emerged of an alleged attempt by Gordon Brown and his advisers to oust Tony Blair in 2005. Mr Miliband was only loosely implicated; but, aside from his decision to run against his brother, his association with Mr Brown is the only thing many voters know about him. His strategists are striving to fix this lack of definition. A speech on June 13th on “responsibility”, in which he deplored its absence among some bankers and welfare claimants, was a start.

But there are two problems with this mission to define Mr Miliband. First, although ambiguity about his beliefs is one of his problems, it is not the only one. For many, the youthful, adenoidal Mr Miliband does not look or sound like a prime minister. Voters' immediate reactions to him in focus groups conducted by the Labour Party are said to border on the cruel. Superficial though these problems might be, they matter—as William Hague, the foreign secretary who rarely seemed prime ministerial during his time as Tory leader from 1997 to 2001, can attest.

Second, Mr Miliband's lack of alternatives to the government policies he attacks is part of a broader intellectual malaise on the left. From the early 1990s to the middle of the last decade, most new ideas, such as tax credits and “trust funds” for babies, came from the centre-left. Even market-driven policies, such as the introduction of more choice and competition in the public services, owed more to Blairite wonks than to right-leaning think-tanks, many of which seemed to stop thinking when Margaret Thatcher left office.

Recent years have seen a reversal. The intellectual balance of power resembles that of the 1980s, when the right pioneered policies such as privatisation and council-house sales, while the left was in a defensive crouch. The coalition's reforms of schools, welfare and policing have their roots in young think-tanks such as the Centre for Social Justice and Policy Exchange, created to fill the void left by august but inactive Thatcherite bodies such as the Centre for Policy Studies and the Institute of Economic Affairs. Nothing like this rejuvenation has happened on the left.

It is hard to see what Mr Miliband can do about this. Part of the problem is the austere fiscal context: left-wing ideas tend to cost money. And though there are many former Blairite ministers and advisers with interesting thoughts on localism and public-service reform, Mr Miliband has been rebuffed whenever he has offered them roles in his team. They remain glum about the rejection of his brother, who is closer to them ideologically, and want nothing to do with what they suspect will be another Labour defeat at the next general election.

The future's blue

The closest thing to hope comes in the shape of “Blue Labour”, a nascent movement of thinkers and activists who, echoing Mr Cameron's “Big Society”, say that Labour should be less statist and more communitarian in its outlook. Maurice Glasman, an academic who was ennobled earlier this year, is one proponent. Marc Stears, another academic and an old friend of Mr Miliband, is another. Critics, including Mr Blair, say Blue Labour's reverence for mutual guilds, stable communities and other trappings of pre-war Britain is too backward-looking for modern voters.

Still, Mr Miliband is likely at least to flirt with such thinking in the coming months. His advisers worry that Mr Cameron is building a monopoly on notions of community, conscience and responsibility—leaving Labour looking like uninspiring spendthrifts. Blue Labour also offers Mr Miliband a way of moving to the centre ground without embracing the Blairite zeal for markets that he has never shared.

Mr Miliband's electoral strategy, which is to target the low-to-middle-income earners who accounted for most of the 5m votes Labour lost between 1997 and 2010, is smarter than many allow. But the irony is that a truly disastrous Labour leader would be less of a problem for the party, as he or she could be removed. A far worse scenario for Labour is that its leader will be good enough to hold on until the next election, but not good enough to win it.